11.29.2011

Disclaimer: This post does not have any pictures. Due to the sequence of events, no pictures were taken. This post is mainly for our family to remember the craziness of Cale's first Thanksgiving.

We had grand plans to spend Adam's entire Thanksgiving Break traveling to Arkansas and Mississippi to visit family and friends, and were very excited to introduce Cale to extended family members this year! Logistically, we were jumping through a few hoops, thinking it actually make things go a lot smoother. Looking forward to the break, we were optimistic and excited to have a school-free five days as a family. Funny. New thoughts: Traveling with an infant is often very unpredictable and almost never goes as it is envisioned. Also, life happens.

The Sequence of Events:

October 2011

Stacey, Adam's step-sister, invited us to come and spend Thanksgiving at her house in Mississippi, along with the rest of Adam's extended family. We had never been to Stacey's house and were excited to see everyone, since it had been a few years since we had all been together last. We quickly started talking about logistics and Adam found out that he would not be released from school until 5:30pm on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Since our destination was 8 hours away, we decided it would be best to make a stop mid-way there. We also opted to not start our trip with Cale being put into the car at 6pm and driving until Midnight, only to get up first thing Thursday morning and continue driving 2.5 more hours. He doesn't LOVE his car seat and he really doesn't sleep well in his car seat, so the thought of starting our trip out that way did not sound enticing. We have great family friends who live in Little Rock, Arkansas, and have a little boy who is only nine weeks older than Cale. I checked with the Carroll's to see if it would be okay to stay with them overnight, and then booked Cale and I a flight into Little Rock.

November 20th, 2011 (Sunday before Thanksgiving)

We got a phone call from the Carroll's letting us know that they had a family member who had passed away and would be out of town for the funeral until after Thanksgiving. They insisted that we still stay at there house, but would not be able to pick Cale and I up from the airport.

November 23rd, 2011 (Wednesday before Thanksgiving)

Luckily, my sister's roommate from college was in town visiting family, and was able to pick us up. We decided to continue with our plans, and arrived in Little Rock after an hour long flight with a VERY active little boy. (Up until this age, when we have flown in the past, we coordinated our flights with Cale's nap schedule, so e spent most of the plane rides napping. Not the case these days. If there is action going on around him, he feels the need to be apart of it. Needless to say, there was no napping on this flight!!) I was exhausted and thankful to see Mal's face when we arrived in Little Rock. She dropped us off at the Carroll's and I put Cale down for a nap. All was peaceful that night, and I was feeling pretty good about the trip that lay ahead of us. Adam arrived at the Carroll's around 12:30am, and we repacked the car so that we could hit the road early in the morning...

November 24th, 2011 (Thanksgiving Day)

Adam and I woke up around 6am and got ready before waking Cale up. By 7:30am, we were loaded in the car and ready to get on the road....that is, until Adam realized he had left his glasses inside and then realized he had also locked us out of the house. Lovely. We tried calling the Carroll's to find a hidden key outside, but couldn't get a hold of anyone. We decided to go ahead and leave, knowing Adam would be REALLY missing his glasses by the evening. About 20 minutes down the road, the Carroll's called us back. They told us where the hidden key was and we turned right back around to get Adam's glasses. Same scene, take two. Back on the road and heading towards Mississippi, we were already an hour behind our "planned" schedule. Oh well, if that's the worst thing that happens....

November 25th, 2011 (Friday after Thanksgiving)

12am - I wake up and head to Target. Make my purchases and finally leave after standing in the wrong line for two hours.

2:30am - Creep back into the hotel room, only to hear Cale crying. I crawl into bed and Adam leans over to whisper that he has been fussing on-and-off for the past 45 minutes. Great.

3:00am - Cale finally settles down and we all sleep.

7:30am - Cale wakes up and I pick him up. He is BURNING up. After waiting 15 minutes for him to cool down (thinking it might have been because he was bundled up), I send Adam to Walgreen's to buy a thermometer.

8:00am - Adam returns with the thermometer and we realize Cale has a 101.5 degree fever. We call our pediatrician, who tells us to keep him on Tylenol to see if it comes down.

8:30am - We call Adam's family to tell them we are going to lay low at the hotel to see if Cale feels better after his morning nap. We find out that Adam's mom had been up sick most of the night. Lovely.

10am - After knowing that we are not going to go over to Stacey's house and expose Cale to whatever illness Adam's mom might have, and after deciding that the thought of being stuck in a hotel room for two days with a sick baby sounds miserable, we decide to pack up and head back to Little Rock....less than 24 hours after we had arrived in Mississippi. We were so sad to leave so early, since we felt like we had barely spent anytime with the people we had come to visit.

12pm - Head back towards Little Rock. Realize that Cale's temperature has still not broken, and that it's only getting higher, we decide to make an appointment at an "after-hours" clinic in Little Rock. I called what seems like every clinic in Little Rock, only to come to the conclusion that the only clinics that are open the day after Thanksgiving are the ones at the hospital. I hear "cha-ching, cha-ching" in the back of my head, as I make an appointment for Cale at Children's Hospital. Who knows what our insurance will cover at an out-of-state hospital - oh well. It was important the have Cale checked out.

3:30pm - Arrive at Children's and get right in to see the doctor. He looks like Santa Clause, which Cale finds hysterical. Even though he wasn't feeling well, Cale managed to laugh every time he looked at the doctor, which made us all laugh. Diagnosed with a virus, we are told to keep Cale on Tylenol and Motrin. Hopefully things will turn around sooner rather than later.

5pm - Arrive back at the Carroll's (who are now home from traveling).

6pm - Put Cale to bed early, since it has been a long day and he isn't feeling so hot.

9pm - We fall into bed, praying it won't be a rough night for Cale.

October 26th, 2011 (Saturday after Thanksgiving)

7:30am - Cale wakes up, and I am thankful he only woke up one time during the night, and after some Motrin, he went back to bed easily.

9:00am - Put Cale down early for a morning nap and pack up.

10:20am - Cale and I leave for the airport (we had originally planned to leave the following Monday, after staying to spend time with the Carroll's, but when Cale got sick, we bagged that plan. I called Southwest to see if there were any flights available on Saturday, in which I could use the pass I planned to use on Monday. I got the last "pass" seat on the plane. Thank You, Jesus. I know he was completely providing for us in the midst of the chaos.)

11:30am - Finally get through security after being thoroughly scanned and having Cale's bottles and sippy-cup checked and re-checked. I thought we'd never make it through security. I looked at the monitor to see which gate to head to, and notice a the word "boarding" next to my flight number. Since my plane was leaving from the very last gate at the airport, I decided that I was going to have to sprint if I was going to make it. Imagine: Me, sprinting through the airport with a sick baby, a car seat on rollers, and a over-sized diaper bag. Trucking it....and it's a good thing I did. I was the last person to board, and walked all the way to the back of the plane, only to realize that there were only middle seats available. Really?!?! A sweet girl scooted over to let me have the aisle seat - I think she felt sorry for me and Cale - we did look pretty pitiful by the time we made it on the plane.

1:15pm - We made it back to Dallas, and I was exhausted.

I mean, flat-on-my-face E.X.H.A.U.S.T.E.D.

4:30pm - Adam gets home, and we both just look at each other, not believing what we had just done. Four Days. Three States. Two Flights. Eighteen Hours in the Car. One Hospital Visit. One Hotel. Three Very Tired People.

Happy Thanksgiving, Cale. We hope that the eventfulness of this holiday will not continue in the years to come, but I am holding it lightly. Isn't it ironic - the title of my blog is "A Woman With a Plan", I should add to that title, "Who Is Learning To Hold the Plan VERY Loosely!"

11.16.2011

Time flies when you're having fun...and we sure are having fun! Cale is in a really fun stage right now (I hear that will probably not be the last time I say that), and I love getting to spend all day, every day with him. This past month, I feel like he has become extra curious, very focused on new things and wanting to touch, hear, and see how everything works. I love watching his eyes, because he gets very focused on something, and it's almost like I can see his brain processing the new information. I guess this is the beginning of the "sponge" years. I better watch what I say and do!

Cale is scooting himself all over the place. He can get where he needs to go and he does it quickly. He has been getting up on all fours and moving his hands forward, but then he goes to his tummy and scoots himself the rest of the way. I have to admit that I am completely okay with his method of moving right now, because he still stays in his general vicinity. When he figures out that crawling will get him places at a faster rate, I am going to be in BIG trouble, so I'm not going to push it. He recently has started pulling himself up on things - he definitely prefers to be standing...I think he likes the view better!

He has six teeth now! Well, four of them are still working their way down, but his bottom two are officially in, and all four top teeth came at the same time - talk about a few killer nights! Cale was such a trooper though, and I think we're through the thick of it though. Now, only about 22 more to go!

He has also gained some independence - he has officially become opinionated about being fed. He doesn't like it. He wants to do ALL BY HIMSELF! I have a feeling this is just the beginning... His new selection of foods include waffles, yogurt (still likes it, thankfully), diced peaches, pear, and banana, strawberries, peas, diced carrots and potatoes, and his new favorite is Ritz crackers. I think we're only a few weeks away from cutting our "grown-up" meals into tiny bites for Cale to eat with us. That feels very grown up to me.

We made a BIG change in our house last week! For the past eight months, Cale has slept in the "third bedroom" of our house, which is a great sized room, but with one BIG problem - the only way to get to the master bedroom is to walk through it. Pictures below...

(Side Note: The floral valance is no longer there...this picture was taken before Cale was born, so we were prepared for a boy or girl!)

Well, before Cale was born, I had decided that we were going to keep all of the window blinds open so the sun would shine into his crib, we would keep his bedroom door open, so that he would hear all of the noise and get used to it, and we would walk freely back and forth through his room, and he would have to get used to that too. Now, I just laugh at myself. Really? What in the world was I thinking? I mean, the first month, it did work. For one month. Until Cale started screaming 23 hours a day and I would do just about anything to get him to sleep. Like use black out curtains and a sound machine. And I wouldn't dare enter his room while he slept, for fear that the crying would resume, and I really did not think I could take much more of that. That lasted about three months, but when the crying finally subsided a bit, Cale all of a sudden became acutely alert. Of everything. Like the door quietly opening, or the creaking of our hard wood floor we tried to tip toe across. I am embarrassed to admit that there were a few nights where Adam even decided to sleep in our guest room so that he did not have to walk through Cale's room at 6:45 in the morning and wake him up early. Oh, and one more detail about Cale's room - his closet is where our washer and dryer are. Imagine trying to coordinate laundry with a LIGHT sleepers nap schedule. Well, after eight months of the craziness, Adam and I decided to take the plunge and move Cale to the guest room and the guest room to Cale's room. I thought I would regret "losing" the guest room, but it turns out that I didn't really lose the guest bedroom at all. And, after Cale's AWESOME naps that he's been taking since moving to his new room, I really don't think I'd care if we had a guest room at all. This has been life-altering...and I am NOT being dramatic. I was able to get all of our laundry done in 1.5 hours - that hasn't happened in 8 months! Needless to say, we are all three very happy with Cale's new room. The ONE downside - we left his striped walls in the other room. These walls just seem so plain! Oh well, I don't miss them enough to repaint them...talk about HOURS of labor!

Introducing: Cale's new room!!

Last weekend, we attempted to get a family Christmas picture taken. A dear friend of ours met us at a local park and took A LOT of pictures - I think we did end up with some pretty great pics! After the family shoot, I tried to get a few of Cale. I think we were able to get a few "framers".

This is a total Adam face!

While we were at the park, Adam took the opportunity to teach Cale about ducks...

Recently, I've become addicted to Pinterest. There are so many great ideas on that website - if only I had time to do them all! Well, today, I did get a little bit inspired...

About Me...

I have been married for seven years to a wonderful man, Adam. In March 2011, we welcomed our first son. I went from being a teacher to a stay at home mom. My life has taken so many unexpected turns, complete with road bumps along the way, but I wouldn't change a thing...